The presidency has said that thoughts and activities of the followers of the candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in last year’s presidential election, Mr. Peter Obi, will not distract the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu Administration.
Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, who ruled out the possibility of the administration being distracted, also accused the former Anambra governor of introducing a dangerous slant to politics by deploying religious and ethnic sentiments.
Onanuga spoke in a chat aired on Mic On Podcast. However, reacting to a question on whether Obi’s politics and his followers could pose a threat to President Tinubu’s chances in 2027, Onanuga said the administration has no time to entertain thoughts about 2027 politics yet.
He said: “As of now, we are busy with governance and we don’t want our attention diverted from the focus of what the government is trying to do. We are very busy, we’re not even looking at them now.”
Speaking about Obi’s political style at the last election, he said: “What I know about the campaign of Obi was that for the first time in a very long while in our country, we had a candidate who was inflaming ethnic passion and that was the way the election went at that time, he was inflaming ethnic and religious passions, bringing two dangerous things to our politics; ethnicity and religion. That was what he did and those things were dangerous to our politics.”
Asked if he believed some opponents wanted to intentionally sabotage the Tinubu administration, the Presidential spokesman said: “Of course, it is very clear unless people are not perceptive. Up till now, some are still writing that Bola Tinubu stole the presidency and some people are saying that the man who came third actually won the election, and they are very unapologetic about that.
“How could somebody who came third have won that election? You can even see when they were talking about the naira, some people were just happy that the Naira was going downhill. You can trace them. People who are saying so are members of the Obidient movement.”
He debunked the belief in some quarters that President Tinubu also employed religious tactics, especially in his choice of a deputy, noting that the choice of Vice President Shettima was basically because of his other qualities and not his religious persuasion.
